Trump’s stance on climate change puts him in direct opposition to the pope

Pope
Francis attends his general audience at the Vatican, November 16,
2016Alessandro
Bianchi/Reuters

Donald Trump’s denial of climate change has made him an adversary
of environmentalists — a group that includes the world’s
most revered religious leader.

In an address to a group of scientists at the Vatican this week,
Pope Francis suggested science has become more important
than ever.

“Never before has there been such a clear need for science to be
at the service of a new global ecological equilibrium,”
the pope said, adding that the goals of the scientific
and Christian communities are increasingly converging around the
need to protect the planet. These sentiments echoed those more
elaborately described in the pope’s encyclical on the environment, which was
published in June 2015.

The delegation of 80 scientists — called the Pontifical Academy of Sciences — includes physicist
Stephen Hawking as well as Nobel laureates in the fields of
chemistry, physics and medicine.

Though Pope Francis never mentioned Donald Trump by name, he
suggested that the delay in implementing global climate
agreements indicates that politics has submitted to the profit
motive.

“It is worth noting that international politics has reacted
weakly – albeit with some praiseworthy exceptions – regarding the
concrete will to seek the common good and universal goods, and
the ease with which well-founded scientific opinion about the
state of our planet is disregarded,” the pontiff said.

President-elect
Donald Trump addresses the crowd at his election night party in
New York.Mark Wilson/Getty
Images

Trump’s campaign promises included pulling the US out of the
landmark Paris climate accord, which commits 115 countries to
work together to keep the global temperature from rising more
than 2 degrees Celsius.

Without the US, the global greenhouse gas emissions
reductions would be weaker, and less money would be available for
developing countries to use in their climate efforts (the
agreement established a fund with contributions from rich
nations). Leaders including
Xie Zhenhua, China’s top climate negotiator, have criticized
Trump for his threat to back out, and vowed to continue the work
with or without the US.

Even without pulling out of the agreement, however, Trump could
simply take advantage of the fact that it has no mechanisms of
enforcement beyond requirements for transparency, and do nothing
to regulate or decrease US emissions. That too, the pontiff said,
is unacceptable.

“We are not custodians of a museum or of its major artifacts to
be dusted each day, but rather co-operators in protecting and
developing the life and biodiversity of the planet and of human
life present there,” Pope Francis said.

Neither Trump nor Myron Ebell, who is leading the Environmental
Protection Agency transition, share that philosophy. Ebell has
suggested that climate research is actually an arm of a
coordinated political movement, and told Business Insider in
August that environmental issues are best resolved by innovation
in the free market. “It would be much better to free up the
economy and get rid of the EPA rules and a lot of the Department
of Energy programs,” he said.

Bob Walker, a senior Trump advisor, has also suggested that the
administration will
strip funding from NASA’s earth science research. The cut,
Walker
told the Guardian, is part of an effort to eliminate
“politicized science” and prioritize deep space research. But the
pope also suggested the nature of scientific research and
consensus means it doesn’t have an agenda.

“It falls to scientists, who work free of political, economic or
ideological interests, to develop a cultural model which can face
the crisis of climatic change and its social consequences,” the
pontiff said.

Environmentalists are already prepared for a future full of
showdowns with Trump.

“If Trump does try to undermine climate action, he will run
headlong into an organized mass of people who will fight him in
the courts, in the states, in the marketplace and in the
streets,” Michael Brune, executive Director of the Sierra Club
wrote in a statement following the election.